If Truth Were a Child: Essays

Paperback

We live in an age of polemics. Choices are presented as mutually exclusive and we are given little time to listen. You are either secular or religious. You either believe in the exclusive truth of your own religion or you believe truth is everywhere or impossible to discover. The battle over truth rages on. But what if truth were a child? With how much more care and humility would we speak and act if truth was not the result of some war of wills, but a flesh-and-bone living child, a living soul? Humanities scholar and Latter-day Saint George B. Handley charitably invites us to put away the false traditions of the fathers while seeking to lay hold of every good thing wherever it may be found in the world, thereby increasing our faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Description

We live in an age of polemics. Choices are presented as mutually exclusive and we are given little time to listen. You are either secular or religious. You either believe in the exclusive truth of your own religion or you believe truth is everywhere or impossible to discover. The battle over truth rages on. But what if truth were a child? With how much more care and humility would we speak and act if truth was not the result of some war of wills, but a flesh-and-bone living child, a living soul? Humanities scholar and Latter-day Saint George B. Handley charitably invites us to put away the false traditions of the fathers while seeking to lay hold of every good thing wherever it may be found in the world, thereby increasing our faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Review

George Handley, one of the Latter-day Saint tradition s most gifted writers, desires to build a culture worthy of its revealed truths and this work is a step in that direction. It is a searchingly honest examination of the disciple s quest, viewed through his own yearnings and failures and small victories along the way. A provocative call to the heart and mind alike. –Terryl Givens, coauthor (with Fiona Givens) of The God Who Weeps and The Christ Who Heals

In our rancorous era of polarization, If Truth Were a Child arrives as a breath of fresh air. George Handley calls us to a better version of ourselves, one characterized by capacious curiosity, serious moral engagement, compassionate critique, and most of all reconciling love. This is a wise and generous book that presents a model of being deeply Latter-day Saint in a pluralistic world, a vision that is both humanely religious and religiously humane. –Patrick Q. Mason, author of Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt

Drawing incisive connections between various aspects of Latter-day Saint life and thought that initially strike his reader as counterintuitive, Handley helpfully illuminates how Latter-day Saints today might live and believe with greater compassion, charity, and insight. –Deidre Nicole Green, author of Works of Love in a World of Violence